Joel Cook

VII.

GLIMPSES OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST.

The Great Lakes—Sieur de La Salle—Lake St. Clair—Lake Huron—Detroit—Ann Arbor—Mackinac Island—Sault Sainte Marie—Lake Superior—Lake Nepigon—Thunder Bay—Port Arthur—Kakabika Falls—The Pictured Rocks—Marquette—Keweenaw—Iron and Copper—Houghton—Lake Gogebic—Superior City—Duluth—Messabi and Vermillion Ranges—Green Bay—Wisconsin—Milwaukee—Waukesha—Madison—Rock Island—Davenport—Moline Rapids—Dubuque—Iowa—Black Hawk—Minnesota—La Crosse—Lake Pepin—Falls of St. Anthony—St. Paul—Minneapolis—Fort Snelling—Flour and Lumber—Lake Minnetonka—Minnehaha Falls—Hiawatha and Minnehaha—Source of the Mississippi—Itasca Lake—Minnesota River—Red River of the North—Ancient Lake Agassiz—Sioux Falls—Fargo—Great Wheat Farms—Manitoba—Rat Portage—Keewatin—Winnipeg—Hudson Bay Company—Dakota—Bismarck—The Bad Lands—Yellowstone River—Montana—Big Horn River—Custer Massacre—Livingston—Cinnabar Mountain—Yellowstone National Park—Mammoth Hot Springs—Norris Geyser Basin—Firehole River—Lower, Middle and Upper Geyser Basins—Yellowstone Lake and Falls—The Grand Canyon—Two-Ocean Pond—Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way.

THE GREAT LAKES.

RenÉ Robert Cavelier, the Sieur de La Salle, was the chief French pilgrim and adventurer in the seventeenth century who explored the Great Lakes and valley of the Mississippi, and secured for his country the vast empire of Louisiana, stretching from Canada to the Gulf. His explorations were made in 1669 and again in 1678, and like all the discoverers of that early time he was hunting for the water way thought to lead to the South Sea and provide a route to China. The historian Parkman describes La Salle as one of the most remarkable explorers whose names live in history; the hero of a fixed idea and determined purpose; an untiring pilgrim pushing onward towards the goal he was never to attain; the pioneer who guided America to the possession of her richest heritage. Throughout the northwest his memory is preserved in the names of rivers, towns, and otherwise, and his maps and narratives gave the earliest geography of the Lakes and the vast and prolific region obtained from France in the Louisiana cession.

The Great Lakes on the northern border of the United States are the largest bodies of fresh water on the globe. They carry an enormous commerce, nearly a hundred thousand men being employed by the fleet of lake vessels, which approximates two millions tonnage. At the head of Lake Erie the waters of Detroit River pour in, draining the upper lakes, this stream, about twenty-five miles long, flowing from Lake St. Clair and broadening from a half-mile to four miles width at its mouth. Lake St. Clair is elevated five hundred and thirty feet, but is small, being about twenty-five miles in diameter, and shallow, only about twenty feet deep. The navigation of its shallows is intricate, and is aided by a long canal through the shoals at the upper end, where the St. Clair River discharges, a strait about forty miles long, flowing south from Lake Huron. This great lake is at five hundred and eighty feet elevation, and in places seventeen hundred feet deep, covering twenty-four thousand square miles, and containing many islands. At its northern end, Lakes Superior and Michigan join it by various straits and water ways beyond Mackinac Island. Westward of Lakes Ontario and Erie, and between them and Lake Huron, a long peninsula of the Dominion of Canada projects southward into the United States, terminating opposite Detroit. Similarly, to the westward of Lake Huron, and between it and Lake Michigan, the State of Michigan has its lower peninsula projecting upward to Canada. The Canadian projection, which is part of Ontario Province, is unfortunately located, being almost surrounded by these expansive lakes, having bleak, cold winds sweeping across them and seriously impeding its agriculture. The surface has little charm of scenery and the population is sparse. The trunk railways, however, find this an almost direct route from Western New York to Detroit and Chicago, and various roads traverse it, coming out on the Detroit River and the swift-flowing St. Clair River, which are crossed both by car-ferry and tunnel. At the outlet of Lake Huron, St. Clair River is less than a thousand feet wide between Point Edward and Fort Gratiot, and here and at Ports Sarnia and Huron the low and level shores are lined with docks, elevators and other accessories of commerce. This river brings vast amounts of sand down out of Lake Huron with its swift current, which are deposited on the St. Clair Flats beyond its mouth, keeping that lake shallow, and requiring the long ship canal to maintain navigation. Below Lake St. Clair, the wider Detroit River presents many fine bits of scenery, while the city of Detroit spreads for several miles along the northwestern bank, and has Windsor opposite, on the Canadian shore. Pretty islands dot the broadening stream below Detroit, and the varying width, with the bluffs on the Canadian side, and the meadows, fields and forests of Michigan, give lovely views.

DETROIT AND MACKINAC.

Detroit means "the strait," and the original Indian names for the river mean "the place of the turned channel." The early visitors who reached it by boat at night or in dark weather, and were inattentive to the involved currents, always remarked, as the Indians did before them, that owing to these extraordinary involutions of the waters, when the sun appeared again it always seemed to rise in the wrong place. The French under La Salle were the first Europeans who passed through the river, and in 1701 the Sieur de la Mothe Cadillac, who received grants from Louis XIV., came and founded Fort Pontchartrain there, naming it after the French Minister of Marine, around which a settlement afterwards grew, to which the French sent colonists at intervals. The British got possession in 1760, and it successfully resisted the conspiracy and attacks of the Ojibway Indian chief Pontiac for over a year, the garrison narrowly escaping massacre. The United States, after the Revolution, sent out General St. Clair as Governor, and his name was given the lake to the northward. Detroit was a frontier post in the War of 1812, being alternately held by British and Americans. In 1824 it had about fifteen hundred people and became a city. It now has three hundred and fifty thousand population, and its commercial importance may be estimated from the fact that the whole enormous traffic of the Lakes passes in front of the city during the seven months that navigation is open, the procession of craft often reaching sixty thousand vessels in the season. Detroit also has extensive and varied manufactures. It has a gradually rising surface and broad and well-paved streets on a rectangular plan, with several avenues radiating from a centre, like the spokes of a wheel. The central square is the Campus Martius, an expansion, about a half-mile from the river, of Woodward Avenue, the chief street. Here is an elaborate City Hall, the principal public building, having in front a magnificent Soldiers' Monument. The suburbs are attractive, and there are various pleasant parks and rural cemeteries, the leading Park of Belle Isle, covering seven hundred acres, being to the northeastward, with a good view over Lake St. Clair. Fort Wayne, the elaborate defensive work of Detroit, is on the river just below the city, and has a small garrison of regular troops. It is yet incomplete, and is designed to be the most extensive fortification on the northern frontier, commanding the important passage between Lakes Huron and Erie and the railway routes east and west.

The peninsula of Michigan was originally covered with the finest forests, so that lumbering has always been a leading industry of the people. The greater portion of its pine woods, however, has been cut off, so that that branch is declining; but its ample supply of hard woods has made the State a great manufacturer of furniture, which is shipped all over the country. Thirty-eight miles west of Detroit, on the Huron River, is the city of Ann Arbor, with a population of fifteen thousand. Here are the extensive buildings of the University of Michigan, the leading educational establishment of the northwest, attended by over three thousand students, of whom a large number are young women. It is richly endowed, and has departments of law and medicine, as well as of literature and science, a large library and an observatory. The State makes a liberal annual contribution for its support, raised by taxation, it being governed by eight regents elected by the people. At the northern extremity of the Michigan Peninsula is the Strait of Mackinac, through which Lake Michigan discharges into Lake Huron. This water way is about four miles wide. In the strait is Mackinac Island, about nine miles in circumference, which was early held by the French on account of its strategic importance, but, being taken by the English in 1760, was captured by Pontiac when he organized the Indian revolt against the British in 1763, and all its inhabitants massacred. It is now a military post and reservation of the United States. This rocky and wooded island contains much picturesque scenery, and is a favorite summer resort, its weird legends, fresh breezes, good fishing and clear waters being the attraction. It was an early post of the northwestern fur-traders, and here was founded one of the frontier trading-stations of the Astor Fur Company in the early nineteenth century by John Jacob Astor of New York, the building in the little village being still known as the Astor House.

LAKE SUPERIOR.

To the northward of Mackinac, Lake Superior discharges into Lake Huron through the Sault Sainte Marie Strait, the "Leap of St. Mary." This strait of St. Mary is a winding and most beautiful stream, sixty-two miles long, being a succession of expansions into lakes and contractions into rivers, dotted with pretty islands and having some villages on the banks. The chief attraction is the Sault, or "Leap," which is a rapid of about eighteen feet descent, the navigation being maintained through capacious modern systems of locks and ship canals provided by both the United States and Canada. To the westward is the great Lake Superior, the largest fresh-water lake on the globe, three hundred and sixty miles long and covering thirty-two thousand square miles, with a coast-line of about fifteen hundred miles. It is elevated about six hundred feet above the ocean level, and has a depth averaging one thousand feet. Nearly two hundred rivers and creeks flow into it, draining a region of a hundred thousand square miles. There are a few islands in the eastern and western portions, but all the centre of the lake is a vast unbroken sheet of water, and generally of a low temperature, the deeper waters being only 39° in summer. The early French missionaries, who were the first explorers, told their interesting story of Lake Superior in Paris in 1636, and in their published account speak of its coasts as resembling a bended bow, of which the north shore makes the arc of the bow, the south shore the chord, and the great Keweenaw Point, projecting far from the southern shore, represents the arrow. Superior has generally a rock-bound coast, displaying impressive beauties of scenery, particularly on the northern shore, where the beetling crags and cliffs are projected boldly into the lake along the water's edge. This northern coast is also much indented by deep bays, bordered by precipitous cliffs, back of which rise the dark and dreary Laurentian Mountains. There are also rocky islands scattered near this portion of the coast, some presenting vast castellated walls of basalt and others peaks of granite, elevated a thousand to thirteen hundred feet above the lake. Nowhere upon the inland waters of North America is there grander scenery.

The most considerable affluent of Lake Superior upon its northern coast is the Nepigon River, coming grandly down cascades and rapids, bringing the waters of Lake Nepigon, an elliptical lake among the mountains to the northward covering about four thousand square miles, bounded by high cliffs, and elevated over eight hundred feet. It is studded with islands, has very deep waters, and receives various streams from the remote northern wilderness. Upon the northwestern shore of Lake Superior are gigantic cliffs, surrounding Thunder Bay, a deep indentation divided from Black Bay by the great projecting promontory of Thunder Cape, rising nearly fourteen hundred feet in grand columns of basalt, the summit containing the crater of an extinct volcano. Across from it is McKay Mountain, another basaltic Gibraltar, rising twelve hundred feet from the almost level plain bordering the bay. Pic Island is between them, guarding the entrance. The pretty Kaministiquia River flows through rich prairie lands down to Thunder Bay, and here is the chief Canadian town on the lake, Port Arthur. Thirty miles up this river is the famous Kakabika Falls, where the rocks are cleft so that the stream tumbles into a chasm one hundred and thirty feet deep, and then boils along with rapid current for nearly a half-mile through the fissure, the sides towering perpendicularly, and in some places even overhanging their bases. Upon this river was for many years the well-known Hudson Bay Company's fur-trading station of Fort William, which now has grain elevators, and is a suburb of the spreading settlement of Port Arthur. This was the beginning of the great portage from Lake Superior over to the Hudson Bay waters at Fort Garry, on the Red River in Manitoba, now Winnipeg, the portage being the present route of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

SAULT SAINTE MARIE TO DULUTH.

The southern shore of Lake Superior is mostly composed of lowlands, covered with sand, glacial deposits and clays, which came from the lake during a former stage of much higher water, when it extended many miles south of the present boundary. These lands, while not well adapted to agriculture, contain rich deposits of copper, iron and other metals and valuable red sandstones. Around the rapids and canals at the outlet has gradually grown the town of Sault Sainte Marie, familiarly known as the "Soo," having ten thousand people, and developing important manufactures from the admirable water-power of the rapids, which is also utilized for electrical purposes. An international bridge brings a branch of the Canadian Pacific Railway over from Canada, on its way to Minneapolis and St. Paul, with connections southward to Chicago, and there is also the military post of Fort Brady. Stately processions of vessels constantly move through the canals, being locked up or down when the navigation season is open, and making this a very animated place, over fifteen thousand ships passing in the seven months when the canals are free from ice. The tonnage is the greatest using any system of canals in the world, far exceeding Suez, and the recent improvements enable vessels of twenty-one feet draft to go through the new locks. Both Governments have expended millions upon these important public works, which are chiefly employed for the transport of grain, flour, coal, iron-ores and copper. The favorite sports at the "Soo" are catching white fish and "shooting the rapids" in canoes guided by the Indians, who are very skillful.

About one hundred miles westward from the "Soo," on the southern lake shore, there rise cliffs of the red and other sandstones formed by the edges of nearly horizontal strata coming out at the border of the lake. These are the noted Pictured Rocks, rising three hundred feet, extending for a distance of about five miles, and worn by frost and storm into fantastic and romantic forms, displaying vivid hues—red, blue, yellow, green, brown and gray—as they have been stained by the oozing waters carrying the pigments. At intervals, cascades fall over the rocks. One cliff, called the Sail Rock, is like a sloop in full sail, and there are various castles and chapels, and an elaborate Grand Portal. In the country around is laid much of the scene of Hiawatha, and at the little lake port of Munising, nearby, was the site of the wigwam of the old woman, Nokomis,

"On the shores of Gitchee Gumee,

Of the shining Big-Sea-Water."

To the westward is the region of iron-ores, and here is Marquette, named for the great Jesuit missionary Father Marquette, who was the first founder of mission settlements in this region, and died in 1675 near the mouth of Marquette River. This town of fifteen thousand people is on Iron Bay, and is the chief port of the Marquette, Menominee and Ishpeming mines. Farther to the westward the great Keweenaw Peninsula projects, the name meaning in the Indian dialect the "canoe portage." At its base, the Portage Lake almost separates it from the mainland, and a short portage to the westward formerly carried the canoes over the narrow isthmus. A canal now enables the lake shipping to pass through without making the long detour around the outer end of the peninsula. Upon this rocky peninsula are the great copper-mines of Michigan, including the Quincy, Tamarack, Osceola, Franklin, Atlantic, and the Calumet and Hecla. The latter is the world's leading Copper Company, making over $4,000,000 estimated annual profit, employing five thousand men, and having the deepest shaft in existence, the Red Jacket, which has been sunk forty-nine hundred feet. Houghton, on the southern shore of Portage Lake, is the leading town of the copper district. To the southwestward and in the western part of the Upper Michigan Peninsula is Lake Gogebic, elevated thirteen hundred feet, in another prolific iron-ore district, the Gogebic range, which produces Bessemer ores, and has its shipping port across the Wisconsin boundary at Ashland, another busy town of fifteen thousand people at the head of Chequamegon Bay. Out in front are the Apostle Islands, a picturesque group, and to the westward the head of Lake Superior gradually narrows in the Fond du Lac, or end of the lake, where are situated its leading ports, Superior City in Wisconsin and Duluth in Minnesota.

Here in the seventeenth century came the early French, and in 1680 a trading-post was established by Daniel du Lhut, afterwards becoming a Hudson Bay Company Station. The mouth of St. Louis River and its bay were naturally recognized as important points for trade, and when the Northern Pacific Railway was projected Superior City got its start. The first railroad scheme failed, the panic of 1857 came, and the railway project was abandoned until after the Civil War; and then, when it was renewed, the terminus was located over on the other side of the river, the place being named Duluth, after the French trader. While there has been great rivalry between them, and Duluth has outstripped Superior, yet the latter has an extensive trade and thirty thousand people. Duluth, the "Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas," as it has been ambitiously called, was originally projected on Minnesota Point, a scythe-shaped natural breakwater running out seven miles into the lake, which protects the harbor, but the town was subsequently built farther in. There were about seventy white people in the neighborhood in 1860, and in 1869 its present site was a forest, while the railroad, which had many set-backs, had only brought about three thousand people there in 1885. The completion of other railway connections in various directions, the discovery of iron deposits, and the recognition of its advantageous position for traffic, subsequently gave Duluth rapid growth, so that it now has eighty thousand people, and is the greatest port on the lake. It is finely situated, the harbor being spacious and lined with docks and warehouses, and it has many substantial buildings. Back of the city a terrace rises some four hundred feet, an old shore line of Lake Superior when the water was at much higher level, and here is the Boulevard Drive, giving splendid views over the town and lake. The vast extent of wheat lands to the westward and the prolific iron-ore district to the northward give Duluth an enormous trade. Its railways lead up to the Messabi and Vermillion ranges, now the greatest producers of Lake Superior iron-ores, the red hematite, most of the output being controlled by John D. Rockefeller and his associates. These mines yield the richest ores in the world, and have made some of the greatest fortunes in Duluth. Yet they were not discovered until 1891, and then the lands where they are generally went begging, because nobody would give the government price for them, $1.25 per acre. One forty-acre tract, then abandoned by the man who took it up because he did not think the pine wood on it was enough to warrant paying $50 for it, is now the Mountain Iron Mine, netting Mr. Rockefeller $375,000 annual profit, and his railroad bringing the ores out gets more than that sum for freights.

THE CITY OF MILWAUKEE.

The early French traders and explorers who came to the upper lakes naturally ascended their affluents, and in this way La Salle, Joliet, Hennepin and others crossed the portages beyond Lake Michigan to the tributaries of the Mississippi. They came to Green Bay on the west side of Lake Michigan, ascended the Fox River and crossed over to the Wisconsin River. Southward from the Upper Michigan Peninsula and westward of the lower peninsula of that State spreads the broad expanse of Lake Michigan, stretching from Mackinac and Green Bay down to Chicago. Its western shore is the State of Wisconsin, extending northward to Lake Superior. When the French explorers came along and floated down its chief river, an affluent of the Mississippi, the latter making the western boundary of the State, they found the Indian name of the stream to be a word which, according to the pronunciation, they spelled in their early narratives "Ouisconsing" and "Misconsin," and it finally came out in the present form of Wisconsin, thus naming the State. The original meaning was the "wild, rushing red water," from the hue given by the pine and tamarack forests. La Salle coasted in his canoe all along the western shore of Lake Michigan, from Green Bay down to Chicago, and crossed over to the Mississippi. The traders established various settlements on that shore which have grown into active cities, and the principal one, eighty-five miles north of Chicago, is Milwaukee, its name derived from the Indian Mannawahkie, meaning the "good land." A broad harbor, indented several miles from the lake, was the nucleus of the city, at the mouth of Milwaukee River, which receives two tributaries within the town, and thus adds to the facilities for dockage, while extensive breakwaters protect the harbor entrance from lake storms.

Milwaukee has three hundred and fifty thousand people, and is the growth mainly of the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is finely located, with undulating surface, the streets lined with trees, and the splendid development of the residential section making it almost like an extensive park, the foliage and garden spaces are so extensive and attractive. Its population is largely German, and its breweries are famous, exporting their product all over the country. It has a grand Federal building, costing nearly $2,000,000, a Romanesque structure in granite, an elaborate Court-house of brown sandstone, a spacious City Hall, a magnificent Public Library and Museum, and many attractive churches and other edifices. Juneau Park, on a bluff overlooking the lake, commemorates the first settler, Solomon Juneau, and contains his statue. Here, in compliment to the large Scandinavian population of Wisconsin, is also a statue of Leif Ericsen, who is said to have been in command of the first detachment of Norsemen who landed in New England in the eleventh century. The Forest Home Cemetery at the southwestern verge of the city is one of the most beautiful in the country. Milwaukee is familiarly called the "Cream City" from the light-colored brick made in the neighborhood, which so largely enter into the construction of its buildings. It has extensive grain elevators and flour mills and large manufacturing industries. To the westward, in a park of four hundred acres, is the National Soldiers' Home, with accommodation for twenty-four hundred. Its Sheridan Drive along the lake shore southward is gradually extending, the intention being to connect with the Sheridan Boulevard constructed northward from Chicago. The lion of the city, however, is the great Pabst Brewery, covering thirty-four acres and producing eight hundred thousand barrels of beer a year. Twenty miles inland to the westward is a favorite resort of the Milwaukeans, the noted Bethesda Spring of Waukesha, whose waters they find it beneficial to take copiously, large quantities being also exported throughout America and Europe for their efficacy in diabetes and Bright's disease.

The capital of Wisconsin is the city of Madison, seventy-five miles west of Milwaukee, built on the isthmus between Lakes Mendota and Monona, thus giving it an admirable position. It has about twenty thousand people, and the lake attractions make it a popular summer resort. The State Capitol is a handsome building in a spacious park, one of the wings being occupied by the Wisconsin Historical Society, with a library of two hundred thousand volumes, an art gallery and museum. The great structure of Madison is the University of Wisconsin, the buildings in a commanding position on University Hill overlooking the charming Lake Mendota. There are seventeen hundred students, and its Washburn Observatory, one of the best in America, has wide fame.

ASCENDING THE MISSISSIPPI.

Westward from Lake Michigan all the railroads are laid across the prairie land en route to various cities on the Mississippi River, several of them having St. Paul and Minneapolis for their objective points, although some go by quite roundabout ways. The great "Father of Waters" comes from Northern Minnesota, flows over the Falls of St. Anthony at Minneapolis, and is a river of much scenic attractiveness down to Dubuque and Rock Island, its width being usually about three thousand feet, excepting at the bends, which are wider, the picturesque bluffs enclosing the valley sometimes rising six hundred feet high. The railways leading to it traverse the monotonous level of prairie in Illinois and Wisconsin, excepting where a stream may make a gorge, and the face of the country is everywhere almost the same. The Moline Rapids in the Mississippi above Rock Island afford good water-power, and here the Government, owning the island, has established a large arsenal, which is the base for all the western army supplies. The admirable location has made cities on either bank, Rock Island in Illinois and Davenport in Iowa, both being commercial and manufacturing centres, and the latter city having the larger population. The Mississippi flows through a rather wide valley, with pleasant shores, having villas dotted on their slopes. The Moline Rapids, which are said to have a water-power rivalling the aggregate of all the cataracts in New England, descend twenty-two feet in a distance of fourteen miles. Above them, the river flows between Illinois and Iowa, and various flourishing towns are passed, the largest being Dubuque, with fifty thousand people, the chief industrial city of Iowa, and a centre of the lead and zinc manufacture of the Galena district. This was the first settlement made by white men in Iowa, the city being named for Julien Dubuque, a French trader, who came in 1788 with a small party to work the lead-mines. Iowa is known as the "Hawkeye State," and its name is of Dakotan Indian derivation, meaning "drowsy," which, however, is hardly the proper basis for naming such a wide-awake Commonwealth. Opposite Dubuque is the northern boundary of Illinois, and above, the Mississippi separates Iowa from Wisconsin.

The Mississippi bordering bluffs now rise much higher and become more picturesque, Eagle Point, near Dubuque, being elevated three hundred feet. Prairie du Chien, just above the mouth of Wisconsin River, was one of the earliest French military posts. This region was the scene of the "Black Hawk War," that chief of the Sacs battling to get back certain lands which in 1832 had been ceded by the Sac and Fox Indians to the United States. He was finally defeated back of the western river shore, the boundary between Iowa and Minnesota being nearby. Minnesota is the "North Star State," and its Indian name, taken from the river, flowing into the Mississippi above St. Paul, means the "cloudy water." The river scenery becomes more and more picturesque as the Mississippi is ascended, the bluffs rising to higher elevations. La Crosse is a great lumber manufacturing town, drawing its timber from both Minnesota and Wisconsin. Above, where islands dot the channel, is perhaps the most beautiful section of the river. Trempealeau Island, five hundred feet high, commands a magnificent view, and the Black River flows in through a splendid gorge. Winona is a prominent grain-shipping town, and at Wabasha the river expands into the beautiful Lake Pepin, thirty miles long and from three to five miles wide, with attractive shores and many popular resorts. Over the lake rise the bold round headland of Point No Point on one side and the Maiden Rock on the other. St. Croix River flows in above on the eastern bank, making an enlargement known as St. Croix Lake, and the upper Mississippi is now wholly within Minnesota, having here at the head of navigation the famous "Twin Cities" of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

THE FALLS OF ST. ANTHONY

Father Hennepin was the first white man who penetrated the wilds of Minnesota, and in 1680 he discovered the great falls of the Mississippi River, to which he gave the name of his patron saint, Anthony of Padua. The river just below the falls naturally attracted the attention of the French adventurers who came to trade with the Sioux, Chippewas and Dakotas, and the first white man who tarried and built a house here was a Canadian voyageur, who came in 1838. In 1841 a French priest established the Roman Catholic mission of St. Paul on the bank of the river, and thus the settlement was named. The admirable water-power of the falls, which, with their two miles of rapids, descend seventy-eight feet, afterwards attracted the attention of millers, lumbermen and other manufacturers, and this made the settlement of Minneapolis, ten miles westward and farther up the river, which began in 1849, the name meaning the "city of the waters." St. Paul grew with rapidity, being encouraged both by steamboat and afterwards by railway traffic; but Minneapolis, though started later, subsequently outstripped it. The two places, rivals yet friends, have extended towards each other, so as to almost form one large city, and they now have over four hundred thousand inhabitants. These "Twin Cities" are running a rapid race in prosperity, each independently of the other. St. Paul is rather more of a trading city, while Minneapolis is an emporium of sawmills and the greatest flour-mills in the world. Both are admirably located upon the bluffs rising above the Mississippi. St. Paul is situated upon a series of ornamental semicircular terraces that are very attractive, though in some portions rather circumscribed. Minneapolis is built on a more extensive plan upon an esplanade overlooking the falls, and extending to an island in midstream, and also over upon the opposite northern side of the river. The Falls of St. Anthony is the most powerful waterfall in the United States wholly applied to manufacturing purposes. The entire current of the Mississippi comes down the rapids and over the falls, the latter having a descent of about fifty feet. It is protected by a wall built by the Government across the river, to prevent the wearing away of the sandstone formation, there having been serious inroads made, while the surface is covered with an apron of planks over which the water runs, with sluiceways alongside to shoot logs down. However much Father Hennepin may have admired the beauties of this great cataract, there is no longer anything picturesque about the Falls of St. Anthony. Logs jam the upper river, where the booms catch them for the sawmills, and subterranean channels conduct the water in various directions to the mills, and discharge their foaming streams below. There is no romance in the rumble of flour-rollers and the buzz of saws, but they mean a great deal of profitable business. The force exerted by the falls at low water is estimated at one hundred and thirty-five thousand horse-power.

St. Paul is the capital of Minnesota, and the State is building a magnificent new Capitol, constructed of granite and marble, with a lofty central dome, at a cost exceeding $2,000,000. There is a fine City Hall and many imposing and substantial business edifices. Its especial residence street, Summit Avenue, is upon a high ridge, parallel with and some distance back from the Mississippi, the chief dwelling, a large brownstone mansion, being the home of the leading railroad prince of the Northwest, President James J. Hill of the Great Northern Railroad. Here is also the new and spacious Roman Catholic Seminary of St. Thomas Aquinas. The old military post of Fort Snelling is on the river above St. Paul, near the mouth of Minnesota River. In Minneapolis, the great building is the City Hall, completed in 1896, and having a tower rising three hundred and fifty feet, giving a superb view. The Guaranty Loan Company's Building is one of the finest office structures in America, with its roof arranged for a garden, where concerts are given. Minneapolis has a widely extended residential section, with hundreds of attractive mansions in ornamental grounds. Near the river bank is the University of Minnesota, having well-equipped buildings and attended by twenty-eight hundred students.

Minneapolis is the greatest flour manufacturing city in the world. Its mills, of which there are some twenty-five, are located along the river near the falls, and have a daily capacity of over sixty thousand barrels, turning out about eighteen millions of barrels annually, which are sent all over the globe. The whole country west and northwest of Minneapolis, including the Red River Valley, the Dakotas and Manitoba, is practically a fertile wheat field, growing the finest grain that is produced in America, and this makes the prosperity of the city. The Pillsbury-Washburn Flour Mills Company are the leading millers. The great Pillsbury A mill, which turns out ten thousand seven hundred barrels a day, is the world's champion flour-mill. It is a marvel of the economical manufacture, the railway cars coming in laden with wheat, being quickly emptied, and then filled with loaded flour-barrels and sacks for shipment. Machinery does practically everything from the shovelling of wheat out of the car to the packing of the barrel or sack with the product. This huge mill stands in relation to the flour trade as Niagara does to waterfalls. The other great Minneapolis industry is the lumber trade. Minnesota is well timbered, a belt of fine forests, chiefly pine, stretching across it, known as the Coteau des Bois, or "Big Woods," an elevated plateau with a rolling surface, having thousands of lakes scattered through it, fed by springs, while their outlets go into streams feeding the Mississippi, down which the logs are floated to the booms above the falls. The extensive sawmills will cut over four hundred and fifty millions of feet of lumber in a year. Thus the flour and lumber have become the chief articles of export from Minneapolis.

There are several pleasant lakes in the neighborhood, which are popular resorts of the people of the "Twin Cities," the largest and most famous being Minnetonka, the Indian name meaning the "Big Water." It is a pretty lake, at nearly a thousand feet elevation, with low, winding and tree-clad shores, having little islets dotted over its surface, and myriads of indented bays and jutting peninsulas which extend its shore line to over a hundred miles, though the extreme length of the lake is barely seventeen miles. There are many attractive places on the shores and islands, and large steamers ply on its bosom. From this lake the discharge is through the Minnehaha River, and its Minnehaha Falls, the "Laughing Water," poetically praised by Longfellow in Hiawatha. The beautiful glen in which this graceful cataract is found has been made a park. The falls are about fifty feet high, and a critical observer has recorded that there is "only wanting a little more water to be one of the most picturesque cascades in the country." Below the Minnehaha Falls is another on a smaller scale, which the people thereabout have nicknamed the "Minnegiggle." Thus sings Longfellow of Minnehaha:

"Homeward now went Hiawatha;

Only once his pace he slackened,

Only once he paused or halted,

Paused to purchase heads of arrows

Of the ancient Arrow-maker,

In the land of the Dacotahs,

Where the Falls of Minnehaha

Flash and gleam among the oak-trees,

Laugh and leap into the valley.

"There the ancient Arrow-maker

Made his arrow-heads of sandstone,

Arrow-heads of chalcedony,

Arrow-heads of flint and jasper,

Smoothed and sharpened at the edges,

Hard and polished, keen and costly.

"With him dwelt his dark-eyed daughter,

Wayward as the Minnehaha,

With her moods of shade and sunshine,

Eyes that smiled and frowned alternate,

Feet as rapid as the river,

Tresses flowing like the water,

And as musical a laughter;

And he named her from the river,

From the water-fall he named her,

Minnehaha, Laughing Water.

"Was it then for heads of arrows,

Arrow-heads of chalcedony,

Arrow-heads of flint and jasper,

That my Hiawatha halted

In the land of the Dacotahs?

"Was it not to see the maiden,

See the face of Laughing Water,

Peeping from behind the curtain,

Hear the rustling of her garments,

From behind the waving curtain,

As one sees the Minnehaha

Gleaming, glancing through the branches,

As one hears the Laughing Water,

From behind its screen of branches?

"Who shall say what thoughts and visions

Fill the fiery brains of young men?

Who shall say what dreams of beauty

Filled the heart of Hiawatha?

All he told to old Nokomis,

When he reached the lodge at sunset,

Was the meeting with his father,

Was his fight with Mudjekeewis;

Not a word he said of arrows,

Not a word of Laughing Water."

THE SOURCE OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

It was in Minnesota, in 1862, that the terrible Indian uprising occurred in which the Sioux, exasperated by the encroachments of the whites, attacked the western frontier settlements in August, and in less than two days massacred eight hundred people. The troops were sent as soon as possible, attacked and defeated them in two battles, and thirty-eight of the Indians were executed on one scaffold at Mankato, on the Minnesota River southwest of Minneapolis, in December. The State of Minnesota is said to contain fully ten thousand lakes of all sizes, the largest being Red Lake in the northern wilderness, having an area of three hundred and forty square miles. The surface of the State rises into what is known as the Itascan plateau in the northern central part at generally about seventeen hundred and fifty feet elevation. From this plateau four rivers flow out in various directions—the one on the Western Minnesota boundary, the Red River of the North, draining the western slope towards Lake Winnipeg and finally to Hudson Bay; the Rainy River, draining the northern slope also through Lake Winnipeg to Hudson Bay; the St. Louis River, flowing eastward to form the head of Lake Superior, and going thence to the Atlantic; and the Mississippi River, flowing southward to seek the Gulf of Mexico. Schoolcraft, the Indian ethnologist and explorer, named this Itascan plateau, and the little lake in its heart, where the Mississippi takes its rise, about two hundred miles north-northwest of Minneapolis, though the roundabout course of the river from its source to that city is a much longer distance, flowing nearly a thousand miles. There was a good deal of discussion as to whether this lake was really the head of the great river, as the lake received several small streams, but Schoolcraft settled the dispute, and named the lake Itasca, from a contraction of the Latin words veritas caput, the "true head." Its elevation is about sixteen hundred feet, being surrounded by pine-clad hills rising a hundred feet higher. Out of Itasca Lake the "Father of Waters" flows with a breadth of about twelve feet, and a depth ordinarily of less than two feet. It goes at first northerly, and then makes a grand curve through a long chain of lakes, describing a large semicircle to the eastward, and finally southwest, before it becomes settled as to direction, and takes its southeast course towards the Falls of St. Anthony, and onward in its grand progress to the Gulf.

THE ANCIENT LAKE AGASSIZ.

The Minnesota River, rising on the western boundary of the State, flows nearly five hundred miles in a deeply carved valley through the "Big Woods" to the Mississippi. Its source is in the Big Stone Lake, which, with Lake Traverse to the northward, forms part of the Dakota boundary. The Red River of the North, rising in Lake Traverse and gathering together the streams on the western slope of the Itascan plateau, flows northward between Minnesota and North Dakota, and into Manitoba, two hundred and fifty miles to Lake Winnipeg. This river has cut its channel in a nearly level plain, and it is curious that in times of freshet its waters connect, through Lakes Traverse and the Big Stone, with the Minnesota, so that steamboats of light draught can then occasionally pass from the Mississippi waters north to Lake Winnipeg. It was this rich and level plain of the valley of the Red River that in the glacial epoch formed the bed of a vast lake which scientists have named Lake Agassiz. Its area, as indicated by well-marked shore-lines and deltas, was a hundred miles wide and over four hundred miles long, stretching far into Manitoba, and the waters were two to four hundred feet deep. It was held up on the north by the retreating ice-sheet of the great glacier, the outlet being southward, where a channel fifty feet deep, fifty miles long and over a mile wide can now be distinctly traced leading its outflow into the Minnesota River, whose valley its floods then greatly enlarged on the way to the Mississippi. The plain of this lake bed is almost level, descending towards the northward about a foot to the mile, and here the ancient lake deposited the thick, rich, black soils which have made the greatest wheat-growing region of North America.

The first settlement of Dakota was on the Big Sioux River at Sioux Falls, where flour-mills and other manufacturing establishments have gathered around a fine water-power, and there are nearly fifty thousand people in the two towns of Sioux Falls in South Dakota and Sioux City in Iowa. The whole region to the northward and far over the Canadian boundary is a land of wheat-fields, with grain elevators dotting the flat prairie at the railway stations, for all the roads have lines to tap the lucrative trade of this prolific region. The Northern Pacific Railway crosses Red River at Fargo, which, with the town of Moorhead, both being wheat and flour centres, has a population of fifteen thousand. To the westward are the vast "Bonanza" wheat farms of Dakota, of which the best known is the Dalrymple farm, covering forty-five thousand acres. Steam-ploughs make continuous furrows for many miles in the cultivation, and in the spring the seeding is done. The whole country is covered with a vast expanse of waving, yellow grain in the summer, and the harvest comes in August. To the westward flows James River through a similar district, and the country beyond rises into the higher plateau stretching to the Missouri. This fertile wheat-growing region extends far northward over the Canadian border forming the Province of Manitoba, the name coming from Lake Manitoba, which in the Cree Indian dialect means the "home of Manitou, the Great Spirit." Its enormous wheat product makes the business of the flouring-mills of Minneapolis, Duluth and many other cities, and furnishes a vast stream of grain to go through the Soo Canal down the lakes and St. Lawrence, much being exported to Europe.

The Canadian Pacific Railway, which provides the traffic outlet for Manitoba, comes from the northern shore of Lake Superior at Port Arthur northwestward up the valley of the Kaministiquia River, and its tributary the Wabigoon, the Indian "Stream of the Lilies." This was the ancient portage, and by this trail and Winnipeg River, the canoe route of the Hudson Bay Company voyageurs, Lord Wolseley led the British army in 1870 to Fort Garry (Winnipeg) that suppressed Louis Riel's French-Indian half-breed rebellion, which had possession of the post. The railway route is through an extensive forest, and leads near the northern shore of the Lake of the Woods, crossing its outlet stream at Rat Portage, so named from the numerous colonies of muskrats, a town of sawmills standing at the rocky rim of the lake, where its waters break through and down rapids of twenty feet fall to seek Winnipeg River, the Ounipigon or "muddy water" of the Crees. Here, and at Keewatin beyond, are grand water-powers, the latter having mammoth mills that grind the Manitoba wheat and send the flour to England. Then, emerging from the forests, the railway crosses the rich black soils of the Red River Valley, and beyond that river enters Winnipeg, the "Prairie City" and commercial metropolis of the Canadian Northwest. For nearly eight hundred miles this alluvial region spreads west and northwest of Winnipeg, with varying degrees of fertility, to the Rocky Mountains. Here, at the junction of the Assiniboine River, coming from the remote northwest, with Red River, has grown a Canadian Chicago of fifty thousand people, developed almost as if by magic, from the little settlement of two hundred and forty souls, whom Wolseley found in 1870, around what was then regarded as the distant Hudson Bay Company frontier post of Fort Garry. Its original name when first established was Fort Gibraltar. The two rivers wander crookedly over the flat land, and between them the city covers an extensive surface. A half-dozen railways radiate in various directions, and there are spacious car-yards and stations. Winnipeg has an energetic population, largely Scotch and Americans, but with picturesque touches given by the copper-colored Indians and French half-breeds, who wander about in their native costumes, though most of these have gone away from Red River Valley to the far Northwest. The city has good streets, many fine buildings and attractive stores. The Manitoba Government Buildings adjoin the Assiniboine River, and the military barracks of Fort Osborne are alongside. Near the junction of the rivers is the little stone gateway left standing, which is almost all that remains of the original trading-post buildings of Fort Garry, representing the venerable Hudson Bay Company, chartered by King Charles II. in 1670, that controlled the whole vast empire of the Canadian Northwest. This Company was a grant by the king originally to Prince Rupert and a few associates of a monopoly of the fur trade over a vast territory in North America, extending from Lake Superior to Hudson Bay and the Pacific Ocean. In this way that portion of British America came to be popularly known in England as "Prince Rupert's Land." The great Company existed for nearly two hundred years, had one hundred and fifty-two trading-posts, and employed three thousand traders, agents and voyageurs, and many thousands of Indians. In the bartering with the red men, the unit of account was the beaver skin, which was the equivalent of two martens or twenty muskrats, while the pelt of a silver fox was five times as valuable as a beaver. In 1869, when the Dominion of Canada was formed, England bought the sovereignty of the Company for $1,500,000 and transferred its territory to Canada. The Company still retains its posts and stores, however, and conducts throughout the Northwest a mercantile business. Far to the westward of Winnipeg spread the fertile prairies of Manitoba and Assiniboia Provinces, until they gradually blend into the rounded and grass-covered foothills making the grazing ranges of Alberta that finally rise into the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies.

DAKOTA AND MONTANA.

Three railways are constructed westward from Red River to the Rockies and Pacific Ocean,—the Northern Pacific and Great Northern in the United States and the Canadian Pacific beyond the international boundary. The former cross the plateau to the Upper Missouri River, and there the Northern Pacific route reaches Bismarck, the capital of North Dakota, having a fine Capitol set on a hill, the corner-stone of which was laid in 1883, with the noted Sioux chief Sitting Bull assisting. This region not so long ago knew only soldiers and Indians; but there has since been a great influx of white settlers, enforcing the idea of which Whittier has significantly written:

The frontier army post of Fort Lincoln on the bluff alongside the river testifies to the time not yet remote when the Sioux and Crow Indians of the Dakotas needed a good deal of military control. The deer, buffalo and antelope then roamed these boundless prairies, but they have all disappeared. Beyond the Missouri River is the region of the Dakota "Bad Lands." The surface rises into sharp conical elevations known as "buttes," and soon this curious district of pyramidal hills known as Pyramid Park is entered, fire and water having had a remarkable effect upon them. Their red sides are furrowed by the rains, and smoke issues from some of the crevices. The lignite and coal deposits underlying this country have produced subterranean fires that burnt the clays above until they became brittle and red. There are ashes and scoriÆ in patches, and cinders looking much like the outcast of an iron furnace. The buttes are at times isolated and sometimes in rows, many being of large size. Their sides are often terraced regularly, and frequently into fantastic shapes, occasionally appearing as the sloping ramparts of a fort. There are frequent pot-like holes among them, filled with reddish, brackish water, and sometimes excavated in the ground with regularly square-cut edges. When the railway route cuts into a butte, its interior is disclosed as a pile of red-burnt clay fragments mixed with ashes and sand. Little prairie dogs dodge in and out of their holes, but there is not much else of life. The boundary is crossed into Montana, and the "Bad Lands" gradually give place to a grazing section. Here stands up the great Sentinel Butte, with its reddish-yellow sides, near the Montana border, and the railway route then descends from the higher region to the valley of the Yellowstone.

The Yellowstone River, one of the headwaters of the Missouri, rises in the National Park, and its fertile valley is among the leading pasturages of Montana. Cattle and sheep abound, and the cowboys are universal, galloping about on energetic little bronchos, with lariats hanging from the saddle. The Big Horn River flows in, and an extensive region to the southward is the Crow Indian reservation, about three thousand living there. It was here, near Fort Custer, at a point forty-five miles south of the railroad, that the terrible massacre took place in June, 1876, by which General Custer and his command of over two hundred and fifty men were annihilated by the Sioux. There is now a national cemetery at the place. We gradually enter the mountain ranges which are the outposts of the Rockies, and passing between the Yellowstone range and the Belt Mountains, reach Livingston, a town of several thousand people, and a great centre for hunting and fishing, at the entrance to the Yellowstone National Park. From here a branch railway turns southward, ascending the valley of the Yellowstone, going through its first canyon, known as the "Gate of the Mountain," an impressive rocky gorge, and ascending a steep grade, so that the floor of the valley rises within the Park to an elevation of over six thousand feet above the sea. A second canyon is passed, and on its western side is a huge peak whose upheaved red rocks have named it the Cinnabar Mountain. These red rocks are in strata streaked down its sides with intervening granite and limestone. One of these, the Devil's Slide, is conspicuous, its quartzite walls rising high above the lower strata and making a veritable slide of great proportions down the mountain. The railroad ends at Cinnabar, and stages cover the remaining distance up the Yellowstone to its confluence with Gardiner River at the Park entrance, and thence to the Mammoth Hot Springs within the Park, the tourist headquarters.

THE AMERICAN WONDERLAND.

The Yellowstone National Park has been set apart by Congress as a public reservation and pleasure-ground, and covers a surface of about fifty-five hundred square miles within the Rocky Mountains. Most of the Park is in the northwestern corner of Wyoming, but there are also small portions in Montana to the north and Idaho to the west. It is a tract more remarkable for natural curiosities than an equal area in any other part of the world, and within it are the sources of some of the greatest rivers of North America. The Yellowstone, Gardiner and Madison Rivers, which are the headwaters of the Missouri, flow out of the northern and western sides, while on the southern side originates the Snake River, one of the sources of the Columbia River of Oregon, and also the Green River, a branch of the Colorado, flowing into the Gulf of California. The central portion of the Park is a broad volcanic plateau, elevated, on an average, eight thousand feet above the sea, and surrounded by mountain ridges and peaks, rising to nearly twelve thousand feet, and covered with snow. The air is pure and bracing, little rain falls, and the whole district gives evidence of remarkable volcanic activity at a comparatively late geological epoch. It contains the most elevated lake in the world, Yellowstone Lake. The Yellowstone River flows into this lake, and then northward through a magnificent canyon out of the Park. Its most remarkable tributary within the Park is Tower Creek, flowing through a narrow and gloomy pass for two miles, called the Devil's Den, and just before reaching the Yellowstone having a fall of one hundred and fifty-six feet, which is surrounded by columns of breccia resembling towers. There is frost in the Park every month in the year, owing to the peculiar atmospheric conditions. The traces of recent volcanic activity are seen in the geysers, craters and terrace constructions, boiling springs, deep canyons, petrified trees, obsidian cliffs, sulphur deposits and similar formations. These geysers and springs surpass in number and magnitude those of the rest of the world. There are some five thousand hot springs, depositing mainly lime and silica, and over a hundred large geysers, many of them throwing water columns to heights of from fifty to two hundred and fifty feet. The most elaborate colors and ornamentation are formed by the deposits of the springs and geysers, these curiosities being mainly in and near the valleys of the Madison and Gardiner Rivers. An attempt has been made under Government auspices to have in the Park a huge game preserve, and within its recesses large numbers of wild animals are sheltered, including deer, elk, bears, big-horn sheep, and the last herd of buffalo in the country. Troops of cavalry and other Government forces patrol and govern the Park.

THE MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS.

This extraordinary region was first made known in a way in 1807. A hunter named Coulter visited it, and getting safely back to civilization, he told such wonderful stories of the hot springs and geysers that the unbelieving borderers, in derision, called it "Coulter's Hell." Others visited it subsequently, but their remarkable tales were generally regarded as romances. The first thorough exploration was made by Prof. Hayden's scientific party for the Government in 1871, and his report led Congress to reserve it as a public Park. The visitor generally first enters the Park at the Mammoth Hot Springs, which are near the northern verge of the broad central plateau. Here are the wonderful terraces built up by the earlier calcareous deposits of these Springs, covering an area of several square miles, and in the present active operations about two hundred acres, with a dozen or more terraces, and some seventy flowing springs, the temperature of the water rising to 165°. The lower terrace extends to the edge of the gorge of Gardiner River, with high mountain peaks beyond. The hotel is built on one of the terraces, with yawning caves and the craters of extinct geysers at several places in front. The higher terraces rise in white, streaked with brown and other tints, as the overflowing, trickling waters may have colored them. The best idea that can be got of this place is by conjuring up the popular impression of the infernal regions with an ample stock of heat and brimstone. For a long distance, rising from the top of the gorge of Gardiner River westward in successive terraces to a height of a thousand feet above the stream, the entire surface is underlaid with sulphur, subterranean fires, boiling water and steam, which make their way out in many places. The earth has been cracked by the heat into fissures, within which the waters can be heard boiling and running down below, and everything on the surface which can be, is burnt up. Almost every crevice exudes steam and hot water; sulphur hangs in stalactites from the caves; and in some places the odors are nearly overpowering. It is no wonder the Indians avoided this forbidding region, and that the tales told by the early explorers were disbelieved. Yet it is as attractive as it is startling. The hot springs form shallow pools, where the waters run daintily over their rim-like edges, trickling down upon terrace after terrace, forming the most beautiful shapes of columns, towers and coral decorations from the lime deposits, and painting them with delicious coloring in red, brown, green, yellow, blue and pink. So long as the waters run, this decoration continues, but when the flow ceases, the atmosphere turns everything white, and the more delicate formations crumble. The whole of this massive structure has been built up by ages of the steady though minute deposits of the waters, the rate being estimated at about one-sixteenth of an inch in four days. The rocks upon which these calcareous deposits are made belong to the middle and lower Cretaceous and Jurassic formations, with probably carboniferous limestones beneath that put the deposits in the waters. A dozen different terraces can be traced successively upward from the river bank to the highest part of the formation. Two cones of extinct geysers rise from the deposits, near the hotel,—the Liberty Cap, forty-five feet high, and the Giant's Thumb, somewhat smaller,—both having been built up by the deposits from orifices still seen in their tops, whence the waters have ceased flowing. All these springs, as deposits are made, shift their locality, so that the scene gradually changes as the ages pass.

In climbing about this remarkable formation, some of the most beautiful bits of construction and coloring nature has ever produced are disclosed. The Orange Geyser has its sides streaked with orange, yellow and red from the little wavelets slowly trickling out of the steaming spring at the top, which goes off at quick intervals like the exhaust of a steam-engine. At the Stalactite Cave the flowing waters add green to the other colors, and also scale the rocks in places like the back of a fish, while below hang stalactites with water dropping from them. The roof of the cave is full of beautiful formations. The water is very hot when it starts from the top, but becomes quite cold when it has finished its journey down. One of the finest formations is Cleopatra's Bath, with Cupid's Cave beneath, the way to them being through Antony's Gate, all built up of the deposits. Here rich coloring is painted on the rocks, with hot water and steam amply supplied to the bath, which has 154° temperature at the outer verge. All the springs form flat basins with turned-up edges, over which the waters flow, and trickling down the front of the terrace, paint it. When the flow ceases, and the surface has been made snowy white by the atmosphere, it becomes a spongy and beautiful coral, crumbling when touched, and into which the foot sinks when walked upon. The aggregation of the currents run in streams over terrace after terrace, spread out to the width of hundreds of feet, painting them all, and then seeking the Gardiner River, flowing through a deep gorge in front of the formation. Everything subjected to the overflow of these currents gets coated by the deposits, so that visitors have many small articles coated to carry away as curiosities.

Among the many beautiful formations made by these Hot Springs, the most elaborate and ornamental are the Pulpit Terraces. These are a succession of magnificent terraces, fifty feet high, with beautifully colored columnar supports. There is a large pulpit, and in front, on a lower level, the font, with the water running over its edges. The pulpit, having been formed by a spring that has ceased action, is white, while the font is streaked in red and brown. Finely carved vases filled with water stand below, and alongside the pulpit there is an inclined surface, whitened and spread in wrinkles like the drifted snow, which requires very little imagination to picture as a magnificent curtain. Beyond is a blackened border like a second curtain, the coloring being made by a spring impregnated with arsenic. In front of this gorgeous display the surface is hot and cracked into fissures, with bubbling streams of steaming water running through it, and great pools fuming into new basins with turned-up edges, over which the hot water runs. Upon one of these pools seems to be a deposit of transparent gelatine, looking like the albumen of an egg, streaked into fantastic shapes by elongated bubbles. Everywhere are surfaces, over which the water runs, that are covered with regular formations like fish scales. It is impossible to adequately describe this extraordinary place, combining the supposed peculiarities and terrors of the infernal regions with the most beautiful forms and colors in decoration. The great hill made by these Hot Springs was, from its prevailing color, named the White Mountain by Hayden. The springs extend all the way down to the river bank, and there are some even in the river bed. It is a common experiment of the angler to hook a small fish in the cold water of the river, and then, without changing position, to swing him on the hook over into the basin of one of these hot springs to cook him. The formation of the terraces is wedge-shaped, and runs up into a gulch between the higher mountains, which have pines scattered over them, and also grow some grass in sheltered nooks. It is said that the volume of the springs is gradually diminishing.

THE NORRIS GEYSER BASIN.

The route southward into the Park crosses mountain ridges and over stretches of lava and ashes and other volcanic formations, through woods and past gorges, and reaches the Obsidian Creek, which flows near the Obsidian Cliff. This remarkable structure is a mountain of black glass of volcanic formation, rising six hundred feet, with the road hewn along its edge. It looks as if a series of blasting explosions had blown its face into pieces, smashing the glass into great heaps of dÉbris that have fallen down in front. The formation is columnar, rising from a morass adjoining Beaver Lake, which is a mile long. The divide is thus crossed between the Gardiner and Gibbon Rivers, the latter flowing into the Madison, and here, twenty-five miles from the Mammoth Hot Springs, is the Norris Geyser Basin. In approaching, seen over the low trees, the place looks much like the manufacturing quarter of a city, steam jets rising out of many orifices, and a hissing being heard as of sundry engine exhausts. The basin covers about one hundred and fifty acres, and is depressed below the general level. The whole surface is lime, silica, sulphur and sand, fused together and baked hard by the great heat, cracked into fissures, and, as it is walked over, giving out hollow sounds, showing that beneath are subterranean caves and passages in which boil huge cauldrons. There is a background formed by the bleak-looking mountains of the Quadrate range, having snow upon their tops and sides. The steam blows off with the noise of a hundred exhaust pipes, and little geysers boil everywhere, occasionally spurting up like the bursting of a boiler. In one place on the hillside the escaping steam from the "Steamboat" keeps up a loud and steady roar; in another is the deeper tone of the "Black Growler." As a general thing, the higher vents on the hill give off steam only, while the lower ones are geysers. The trees are coated with the deposits, the surface is hot, and all underneath seems an immense mass of boiling water, impregnated with sulphur, giving off powerful odors, while brimstone and lime-dust encrust everything, and a large amount of valuable steam-power goes to waste.

This is the smallest of the basins, having few large geysers. Most of them are little ones, spurting every few minutes, and with some view to economy, whereby the water, after being blown out of the crater to a brief height, runs back into the orifice again, ready to be ejected by the next explosion. A mud geyser here throws up large quantities of dirty white paint in several spouting jets, the eruption continuing ten minutes, when nearly all the water runs back again, leaving the crater entirely bare, and its rounded, water-worn rocks exposed. The "Emerald Pool" is the wide crater of an old geyser, filled with hot water of a beautiful green color, constantly boiling, but never getting as far as an eruption. Probably the best geyser on exhibition in this basin is the "Minute Man," which, at intervals of about one minute, spouts for ten or twelve seconds, the column rising thirty feet, and the rest of the time it blows off steam. The "Vixen" is a coquette which is delightfully irregular, never going off when watched, but when the back is turned suddenly sending out a column sixty feet high. The great geyser here is the "Monarch," standing in a hill from which it has blown out the entire side, and once a day discharging an enormous amount of water over one hundred feet high, and continuing nearly a half-hour. Its column comes from two huge orifices, the surplus water running down quite a large brook. When quiet, this geyser industriously boils like a big tea-kettle. There are plenty of "paint pots" and sulphur springs, and the visitors coax up lazy geysers by throwing stones into them,—a method usually making the small ones go to work, as if angry at the treatment.

THE LOWER AND MIDDLE BASINS.

Through the long deep canyon of the Gibbon River, and up over the mountain top, giving a distant view of the Gibbon Falls, a cataract of eighty feet far down in the valley, the road crosses another divide to a stream in the worst portion of this Satanic domain, which has not been inappropriately named the Firehole River. This unites with the Gibbon to form the Madison River, one of the sources of the Missouri. Miles ahead, the steam from the Firehole Geyser Basins can be seen rising in clouds among the distant hills. Beyond, the view is closed by the Teton Mountains, far to the southwest, rising fourteen thousand feet, the Continental divide and backbone of North America, the highest Rocky Mountain range, on the other side of which is the Snake River, whose waters go off to the Pacific. The Firehole River is a stream of ample current, with beautifully transparent blue water bubbling over a bed of discolored stones and lava. Its waters are all the outflow of geysers and hot springs, impregnated with everything this forbidding region produces; pretty to look at, but bitter as the waters of Marah. Along this river, geysers are liberally distributed at intervals for ten miles, being, for convenience of description, divided into the Lower, Middle and Upper Geyser Basins. The Lower Basin, the first reached, has myriads of steam jets rising from a surface of some three square miles of desolate geyserite deposits. There are about seven hundred springs and geysers here, most of them small. The Fountain Geyser throws a broad low stream of many interlacing jets every two to three hours, lasting about fifteen minutes. The "Thud" Geyser has a crater one hundred and fifty feet in diameter, having a smaller rim inside, within which the geyser operates, throwing a column of sixty feet with a heavy and regular "thud" underground, though it has no fixed period, and is irregular in action. This basin has a generous supply of mud geysers, known as the "paint pots," which eject brilliantly colored muds with the consistency and look of paint, the prevailing hues being red, white, yellow and pink.

About three miles to the southwest, farther up the Firehole River, is the Middle Geyser Basin. It is a locality covering some fifty acres, close to the river, and contains the greatest geyser in the world. The name of Hell's Half Acre was given this place in the early explorations, and still sticks. The surface is composed mainly of hot ashes, with streams of boiling water running over it. The whole basin is filled with hot springs, and surrounded by timbered hills, at the foot of which is the Prismatic Lake, its beautiful green and blue waters shading off into a deposit of bright red paint running down to the river. The great Excelsior Geyser is a fountain of enormous power but uncertain periods, which when at work throws out such immense amounts of water as to double the flow of the river. Its crater is a hundred yards wide, with water violently boiling in the centre all the time and a steady outflow. The sides of the crater are beautifully colored by the deposits, which are largely of sulphur. It is a geyser of modern origin, having developed from a hot spring within the memory of Park denizens. It throws a column over two hundred feet high, and while quiet at times for years, occasionally bursts forth, though having no fixed period. In close connection to the westward is the seething cauldron which is the immediate Hell's Half Acre, that being about its area—a beautiful but terrible lake, steam constantly rising from the surface, which boils furiously and sends copious streams over the edges. This is an uncanny spot, with treacherous footing around, and about the hottest place in the Park.

THE UPPER FIREHOLE BASIN.

For five miles along the desolate shores of Firehole River the course is now taken in a region of mostly extinct geysers, yet with active hot springs and steam jets, and having ashes and cinders covering wide spaces. Ahead is the largest collection of geysers in the world, with clouds of steam overhanging—the Upper Firehole Basin. Hot water runs over the earth, and the "paint pots" color the surface in variegated hues. Here are some forty of the greatest geysers in existence, in a region covering two or three square miles, all of them located near the river, and their outflow making its initial current. The basin is at seventy-three hundred feet elevation above the sea. When the author visited this extraordinary place the guide, halting at the verge, said: "Now I have brought you to the front door of hell." He was asked if there were any Indians about there, and solemnly replied: "No Indian ever comes into this country unless he is blind; only the white man is fool enough to come;" then after a moment's pause he continued, "And I get paid for it, I do." The great stand-by of this Upper Basin, and the geyser that is first visited, is "Old Faithful," near its southern or upper end. This most reliable geyser, which always goes off at the time appointed, is a flat-topped and gently rising cone about two hundred feet in diameter, and elevated towards the centre about twenty feet. The tube is an orifice of eight feet by two feet wide in the centre of this cone, with water-worn and rounded rocks enclosing it. Steam escapes all the time, and the hard, scaly and laminated surface around it seems hollow as you walk across, while beneath there are grumblings and dull explosions, giving warning of the approaching outburst. Several mounds of extinct geysers are near, with steam issuing from one of them, but all have long since gone out of active business. Soon "Old Faithful" gives the premonitory symptoms of an eruption. The steam jet increases, and also the internal rumblings. Then a little spurt of hot water comes, hastily receding with a growl, followed by more steam, and after an interval more growling, finally developing into repeated little spurts of hot water, occupying several minutes. Then the geyser suddenly explodes, throwing quick jets higher and higher into the air, until the column rises in a grand fountain to the height of about one hundred and fifty feet, the stream inclined to the northward, and falling over in great splashes upon that side of the cone, dense clouds of steam and spray being carried by the wind, upon which the sun paints a rainbow. After some four minutes the grand jet dies gradually down to a height of about thirty feet, continuing at that elevation for a brief time, with quickly repeated impulses. When six minutes have elapsed, with an expiring leap the water mounts to a height of fifty feet, there is a final outburst of steam, and all is over. A deluge of hot water rushes down to the Firehole River; and thus "Old Faithful" keeps it up regularly every hour. The eruption being ended, you can look down into the abyss whence it came. Through the hot steam, rushing out with a strong draught, there is a view far down into the rocky recesses of the geyser. The water left by the eruption stands about in transparent shallow pools, and is tinted a pale blue. "Old Faithful's" mound is built up of layers of geyserite—hard, brittle, porous, full of crevices, and having all about little basins with turned-up rims that retain the water. This geyser is the favorite in the region, not only because of its regular performance, but possibly because its odors are somewhat less sulphurous than those emanating elsewhere.

The geysers of the Upper Basin contribute practically the whole current of the Firehole River, their outflow sending into the stream ten million gallons daily. Across the river to the northward, close to the bank, is the Beehive, its tube looking like a huge bird's nest, enclosed by a pile of geyserite resembling a beehive, three feet high and about four feet in diameter. Nearby is a vent from which steam, escaping a few minutes before the eruption, gives notice of its coming. The water column shoots up two hundred feet, with clouds of steam, but it is quite uncertain, spouting once or twice in twenty-four hours, and usually at night. Behind the Beehive are the Lion, the Lioness, and their two Cubs, and to the eastward of the latter the Giantess. The Lion group has only uncertain and small action, while the Giantess is on the summit of a mound fifty feet high, with a depressed crater, measuring eighteen by twenty-four feet, and usually filled with dark-blue water. This is the slowest of all the geysers in getting to work, acting only at fortnightly intervals, but each eruption continues the greater part of the day, with usually long-previous notice by violent boiling and internal rumblings. When it comes, the explosion is terrific, the column mounting two hundred and fifty feet, a perfect water-spout the full size of the crater, with a half-dozen distinct jets forced through it. To the northwest of the Lion and across the river is the Castle, so named from the castellated construction of its crater. It stands upon an elevation, the side towards the Firehole falling off in a series of rude steps. The tube is elevated about ten feet within the castle and is four feet in diameter. It is of uncertain eruption, sometimes playing daily and sometimes every other day, throwing a column of one hundred and fifty feet, falling in a sparkling shower, continuing about forty minutes, and then tapering off in a series of insignificant spurts. The Saw-Mill is not far away, rather insignificant, its tube being only six inches in diameter, set in a saucer-like crater about twenty feet across; but its water column, thrown forty feet high, gives the peculiar sounds of a saw, caused by the action of puffs of steam coming out alternately with the water jets. It generally acts in unison with the Grand Geyser, a quarter of a mile northward, which goes off about once a day. The Grand Geyser in action is most powerful, causing the earth to tremble, while there are fearful thumping noises beneath. The water in the crater suddenly recedes, and then quickly spurts upward in a solid column for two hundred feet, with steam rising in puffs above. The column seems to be composed of numerous separate jets, falling back with a thundering sound into the funnel. The outburst continues a few minutes, stops as suddenly as it starts, and is repeated six or eight times, each growing less powerful. Along the river bank nearby are the Wash Tubs, small basins ten feet in diameter, each with an orifice in the bottom. If the clothes are put in, the washing progresses finely until suddenly out goes the water, and with it all the garments, sucked down the hole. After awhile the basin fills again, and back come the clothes, though sometimes they are very dilatory in returning. The Devil's Well, about fifty feet away, is usually accused of complicity in this movement. It is a broad and placid basin of hot water, with a beautiful blue tinge, in which tourists sometimes boil their eggs and potatoes. It is sentinelled by the Comet Geyser, exploding several times daily, but through an orifice so large that it does not throw a very high column.

The great geyser of this Upper Basin is the Giant. It has a broken cone set upon an almost level surface, with the enclosing formation fallen away on one side, the interior being lined with brilliant colors like a tessellated pavement. It is somewhat uncertain in movement, but usually goes off every fourth day. It gives ample notice, certain "Little Devils" adjoining, and a vent in the side of the crater, boiling some time before it sends up the enormous column which plays ninety minutes. The outburst, when it starts, comes like a tornado, and the stream from it runs into and more than doubles the current of the river. The column is eight feet in diameter, rises two hundred and fifty feet at first, and is afterwards maintained at two hundred feet. There is a deafening noise, and the steam clouds seem to cover half the valley. The column goes up perfectly straight, and falls back around the cone with a deluge of hot water. The Catfish, a small geyser, is nearby, and to the northward a short distance is the Grotto. This is an odd formation, its crater perforated with orifices around a low, elongated mound, which point in different directions; and when it goes off at six-hour intervals, the eruption is by streams at an angle, giving a curious sort of churning motion to the water column, which rises forty feet, continuing twenty minutes. The Riverside has a little crater on a terraced mound just at the river's edge, and is a small, irregular but vigorous spouter, throwing a stream sixty feet. The Fan has five spreading tubes, arranged so that they make a huge fan-like eruption, one hundred feet high in the centre, this display, given three or four times a day, continuing about fifteen minutes. The Splendid plays a jet two hundred feet high every three hours, continuing ten minutes, and may be spurred to quicker action. The Pyramid and the Punch Bowl are geysers that have ceased operations. The former is now only a steam-jet, and the latter, on a flat mound, is an elegant blue pool, elevated several feet, and having a serrated edge. The Morning Glory Spring, named from its resemblance to the convolvulus, is a beautiful and most delicately tinted pool. The investigators of these geysers have been able to get the temperature at a depth of seventy feet within the tubes, and find that under the pressure there exerted the boiling-point is 250°. Upon this fact is based the theory of the operation of the geyser. The boiling-point under pressure at the bottom of a long tube being much higher than at the top, the expansive force of the steam there suddenly generated drives out violently the water above it in the tube, and hence the explosive spouting.

YELLOWSTONE FALLS AND CANYON.

The National Park, besides the extraordinary geyser and hot-spring formations exhibits the grand scenery of the Yellowstone Falls and Canyon. The Yellowstone River has its source in Bridger Lake, to the southeast of the Park, and flows northward in a broad valley between generally snow-capped mountain ridges of volcanic origin, with some of the peaks rising over eleven thousand feet. It is a sluggish stream, with heavily timbered banks, much of the initial valley being marshy, and it flows into the Yellowstone Lake, the largest sheet of water at a high elevation in North America. This lake has bays indented in its western and southern shores, giving the irregular outline somewhat the appearance of a human hand, and there are five of them, called the "Thumb" and the "Fingers." The thumb of this distorted hand is thicker than its length, the forefinger is detached and shrivelled, the middle finger has also been badly treated, and the much swollen little finger is the biggest of all, thus making a very demoralized hand. The trail eastward over from the Upper Firehole Geyser Basin comes out on the West Thumb of the lake, mounting the Continental Divide on the way, and crossing it twice as it makes a curious loop to the northward, the second crossing being at eighty-five hundred feet elevation, whence the trail descends to the West Thumb. Yellowstone Lake is at seventy-seven hundred and forty feet elevation, and covers about one hundred and fifty square miles, having a hundred miles of coast-line. The scenery is tame, the shores being usually gentle slopes, with much marsh and pine woods. Islands dot the blue waters, and waterfowl frequent the marshes. The most elevated portion of the immediate environment is Flat Mountain, on the southwestern side, rising five hundred feet, but beyond the eastern shore are some of the highest peaks of the Park, exceeding eleven thousand feet. Hot springs adjoin the West Thumb, and there is an actual geyser crater in the lake itself. Towards the northern end the shores gradually contract into the narrow and shallow Yellowstone River, which flows towards the northwest after first leaving the lake, having occasional hot springs, geysers, paint pots and steam jets at work, with large adjacent surfaces of geyserite and sulphur. The chief curiosity in operation is the Giant's Cauldron, boiling furiously, and with a roar that can be heard far away. The pretty Alum Creek is crossed, its waters, thus tainted, giving the name. South of this the Yellowstone is generally placid, winding for a dozen miles sluggishly through prairie and timbered hills, but now it contracts and rushes for a mile down rapids and over pretty cascades to the Upper Fall.

Restricted to a width of but eighty feet, the river shoots far over this fall, the current being thrown outward, indicating there must be room to pass behind it. The fall is one hundred and twenty feet, and suddenly turning a right angle at its foot, the stream of beautiful green passes through a not very deep canyon. The appearance of the surrounding cliffs is quite Alpine, though the rocks forming the cascade constantly suffer from erosion. About a half-mile below is the great Lower Falls of the Yellowstone. Before reaching it, a little stream comes into the river over the Crystal Fall, about eighty feet high, rushing down a gorge forming a perfect grotto in the side of the canyon, extending some distance under the overhanging rocks. The surface of the plateau gradually ascends as the Lower Falls are approached, while the river bed descends, and this makes a deep canyon, brilliantly colored, generally a light yellow (thus naming the river), but in many portions white, like marble, with patches of orange, the whole being streaked and spotted with the dark-gray rocks, whose sombre color in this region is produced by atmospheric action. The river rushes to the brink of the Lower Fall, and where it goes over, the current is not over a hundred feet wide, the descent of the cataract being about three hundred feet, and the column of falling waters dividing into separate white streaks, which are lost in clouds of spray before reaching the bottom. Only a small amount of water usually goes over, about twelve hundred cubic feet in a second. Before the plunge the water forms a basin of dark-green color, and both blue and green tints mingle with the prevailing white of the cascade. Towards sunset, when viewed from below, there are admirable rainbow effects. The river is quite narrow as it flows away along the bottom of the canyon, which now becomes deep and large. The grand view of this beautiful picture is from Point Lookout, a half-mile below the falls. Unlike any other of the world's great waterfalls, this cascade, while a part, ceases to be the chief feature of the scene. It is the vivid coloring and remarkable formation of the sides of the canyon that make the chief impression. These change as the sun gives light and shadow, the morning differing from noon and noon from night. It is impossible to reproduce or properly describe the beautiful hues in this wonderful picture. The prevailing tint is a light yellow, almost sulphur color, with veins of white marble and bright red streaked through it. The colors blend admirably, while the cascade in the background seems enclosed in a setting of chocolate-brown rocks, contrasting picturesquely with the brighter foreground. Throughout the grand scene, great rocky columns and pinnacles arise, their brilliant hues maintained to the tops, and the scattered pines clinging to these huge columnar formations give a green tinge to parts of the picture. The dÉbris, forming an inclined base about half-way down, is colored as brilliantly as the rocks above, from which it has fallen. In the view over the canyon from Point Lookout, the contracted white streak of the cascade above the spray cloud is but a small part of the background, while the river below is only a narrow green ribbon, edged by these brilliant hues. Some distance farther down the canyon, another outlook at Inspiration Point gives a striking view from an elevation fifteen hundred feet above the river of the gorgeous coloring of the upper canyon.

This grand Canyon of the Yellowstone extends, as the river flows, a distance of about twenty-four miles. It is a depression in a volcanic plateau elevated about eight thousand feet above the sea, and gradually declining towards the northern end of the canyon. Above the Upper Fall the river level is almost at the top of the plateau, and the falls and rapids depress the stream bed about thirteen hundred feet. About midway along the canyon, on the western side, is Washburne Mountain, the surface from it declining in both directions, so that there the canyon is deepest, measuring twelve hundred feet. Across the top, the width varies from four hundred to sixteen hundred yards, the angle of slope down to the bottom being fully 45°, and often much steeper, in some cases almost perpendicular where the top width is narrowest. This Grand Canyon is the beautiful beginning, as it were, of the largest river in the world,—the Missouri and the Mississippi. Upon the trail in the southern part of the National Park which goes over from the Firehole River to the West Thumb, and at quite an elevation upon the Continental Divide, there is a quiet little sheet of water, having two small streams flowing from its opposite sides. To the eastward a babbling brook goes down into the West Thumb of the Yellowstone Lake, while to the southwest another small creek flows over the boulders towards Shoshone Lake. This scanty sheet of water, properly named the Two-Ocean Pond, actually feeds both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The one stream gets its outlet through the Mississippi and the other through the Columbia River of Oregon.

WESTWARD THE COURSE OF EMPIRE.

Here, in the Yellowstone National Park, with the waters flowing towards both the rising and the setting sun, is the backbone of the American Continent. Beyond it the country stretches through the spacious Rocky Mountain ranges to the Pacific. What is herein described gives an idea of the vast empire ceded to the United States by France in the early nineteenth century, and this Great Northwest is gradually becoming the masterful ruling section of the country. When Bishop Berkeley, in the early eighteenth century, sitting by the Atlantic Ocean waves at Newport, composed his famous lyric on the "course of empire," he little thought how typical it was to become more than a century after his death. He was musing then "On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America." The Arts and the Learning have had vigorous American growth, but his Muse predicted a greater empire than any one could have then imagined.

"The Muse, disgusted at an age and clime

Barren of every glorious theme,

In distant lands now waits a better time,

Producing subjects worthy fame.